News flash: Midnight is still just as late on New Year's Eve, comic-strip artists report

Since the normally dependable Comics Curmudgeon thinks its acceptable to take half of December off to spend "time" with "family," I guess it falls to me to ridicule the sorry state of comics and write some crusty, ill-tempered opinions on the subject.

So there I was, reading through the comics on the back page of today's A section, and it became apparent that roughly every other strip was devoted to the hilarious observation that it's hard to ring in the new year if your bedtime is before midnight. Wocka wocka!

I can understand those wholesome Family Circus moppets accepting the tyrannical ruling of their parents — in fact, they're clueless enough that they seem excited about it — but Dennis is supposed to be a menace, right? Shouldn't he be throwing a tantrum or coming up with an elaborate plan to sneak out to the bar? He even has to go to bed a whole hour earlier than freakin' P.J.!

Mlive doesn't have them online, but "Dilbert" and "Born Loser" had similar concepts today, and those are just the comics that the Citizen Patriot carries.

I'll accept that some people have as much trouble staying up until midnight as I have waking up before noon, but that's not the real issue here. It's the lack of ideas in these strips. So I'm holding every syndicated artist to this: On Dec. 31, 2010, I don't want to see a single iteration of this "joke." Come up with something else or ignore the holiday altogether.

Or is a little originality too much to ask?

(Eh, this is pretty subpar by Comics Curmudgeon standards, but it was my first attempt. He does it every day, and it's always funny (unlike the funny pages). Check out the blog when he returns on Jan. 2.)